Snow photography can be challenging
We woke up to a surprise 4-6” of snow yesterday morning; It meant for a snow-day for the kids and allowed me the opportunity to take some additional snow pictures. This photograph is quite a bit different than my last snow photograph but the simplicity, symmetry, and feel of this photograph conveys what the day was like for me and also how I felt about the surprise snow.
I took quite a few photographs over the course of the day and I found that shooting in the snow, with cloudy skies and fast moving kids, was quite challenging. Some of the pictures were underexposed while others lost detail in the white areas even though I was trying to make proper exposures. If I didn’t adjust the EV value I felt like the images were too muddy but, if I bumped up the EV value then I lost detail in the highlights. I guess that’s par for the course when you shoot in snow as little as I do.
Back to the image above; This is my neighbor’s rooftop and the D90 did a great job focusing on the snow against the dull, grayish-white sky. I wasn’t too sure how I could differentiate the snow from the sky but, in Lightroom, I bumped up the “Clarity” slider which added some mid-tone contrast and helped bring out the detail in the snow.
I also added a little global sharpening and a little warmth by adjusting the white balance. I also increased the brightness some and decreased the lens vignette since the corners were a little dark.
